Jennifer Williams: visual artist

Navigating New York City means existing in a constant state of flux; sidewalks shuffle horizontally, stairs/elevators thrust vertically, subways tunnel below, bridges reach towards the sky.  Day to day experiences often consist of endless journeys from point A to B and back again.  Opportunities for reflection concerning the spaces/places travelled though/around/in, unfortunately, tend to be rare.

My work begins with this concept in mind.  I create photographs and collage compositions that highlight overlooked and banal elements within a neighborhood/area/space.  The compositions are meant to show the viewer what they are missing, so that when they leave the gallery they too can spot various overlooked idiosyncratic elements that surround them everyday. Once an installation location is identified, I spend days scouring the immediate area with my camera, collecting images which I use as found objects.  These images are then downloaded into the computer and various sketches are made using Photoshop.  Each element is printed separately, and stuck onto the wall one piece at a time.  The images in the [flo] series use a material called Photo-tex, a removable sticky back inkjet printable paper.

[flo] #4 – LIC

flo]#4 – 2010 – 20’x9’ – was created specifically for a new gallery called The Homefront, in Long Island City, Queens, New York.  The space previously housed a showroom for a new condos being built across the street, and retains elements of this previous use.

It is a site specific large scale photographic collage that chronicles the radical gentrification glaringly evident in the area surrounding The Homefront.  It visualizes the dissonance between the neighborhood’s low rise brick industrial and residential buildings and the slew of imposing high rise glass mega buildings growing seemingly overnight all around them.  A cacophony of change abounds:  extensive street diversions and construction, structures rising and falling, parks and street furniture appearing, sidewalk repairs, and subway station upgrades.  The streets are ripe with brightly colored freshly painted shapes and lines, a code that only construction workers can translate. Conversely, buildings display the vestiges of time: fading handmade signs warning of obsolete violations, worn metal doors to shuttered garages, house numbers scribbled in sharpie, “sidewalk closed” at nearly every turn.

[flo] #3 – 7W 34th St.

[flo] #3 – 2010 – 23’x14’ – was a site specific work created for the Affordable Art Fair in May 2010.  It was installed in the lobby of 7W 34 Street in midtown Manhattan.  The work used imagery from the fair floor, the building itself (especially the elevators), and the view of midtown from the fair floor windows (11th).  This activated the viewer’s perception of the spaces they would be traversing on the way to and during the fair.

[flo]#2 – DUMBO Arts Festival

[flo]#1 – A.I.R. Gallery – left and back wall

[flo]#1 – A.I.R. Gallery – back wall-floor

[flo]#1 – A.I.R. Gallery – left wall

[flo]#1 and [flo]#2 (2009) focus attention on the immediate landscape in and around the 55 Washington Street (in DUMBO, Brooklyn) elevator lobby/overall 111 Front street building.  By photographing the ducts, pipes, light fixtures, office equipment, and other necessary but often hidden features of a gallery, the collage deconstructs the space, highlighting the architectural elements that make the building function, but often go unnoticed. The viewer is invited to appreciate the space in its entirety instead of imagining the artwork to be separate or unaffected by its context. The literal and imagined ductwork, electric lines, sprinkler system and other pipes lead the viewer’s eye around the space, serving as pathways to the building’s exterior and the surrounding urban geography.

Leaning – 2008 – 4’X6′

Gravitate – 2008 – 4’X4′

Glob – 2008 – 3’X4′

Spurt – 2008 – 6’X6′

collages in public

Construction barricades disrupt our sense of place by genericising stretches of sidewalk, acting as vague placeholders for “the future”, but ultimately functioning as faceless voids in an otherwise chaotic street level landscape. “Free” spaces are nocturnally filled with some form of street style “on-the-fly” mark making: movie posters are slathered onto their surfaces, paint colors are hastily applied to every nook and cranny, graffiti tags are scrawled on top of each other, all creating a system of unique symbols and signifiers. By collaborating with these pre-determined slap dash irregular canvases, my work speaks with their native elements by both becoming one with and overlapping the marks present. They add sounds to a language that seems almost familiar (fly-posting, tagging, etc.), but become a language all of their own, like alien graffiti.

55 Comments

Filed under Artist Profiles

55 responses to “Jennifer Williams: visual artist

  1. forcemental

    This work is incredible! Google Image search here I come.

  2. Amy Rizzico

    Love your work! I saw it first looking at images from Mt. Airy Contemporary Space opening. Had to check out your site. Really interesting stuff. Hope to see it in person one day!

  3. This is amazing work. Thanks for this opportunity to discover it.

  4. How amazing! How do you come up with these images? What inspires you to do this kind of art?

  5. Reblogged this on BetterThanPaper and commented:
    This is great 🙂

  6. Your work of art is amazing

  7. Reblogged this on AlleahLaxamana and commented:
    Love this!

  8. Nice! Makes me want to fill my room’s empty wall with this. 🙂

  9. Great work! Love the concept

  10. Wow! These are incredible. I love how you play with the conventions of the spaces and of the objects in the pictures. Thank you for sharing these photos.

  11. Reblogged this on lyasgurses and commented:
    Good

  12. kennethndungu

    whats up with the mes

  13. Just one word Amazing!
    Like your work.

  14. I have never seen anything like this before. Very nice and creative. Does this kind of art have a name yet??

  15. Do people in cities respect your street art by not putting graffiti tags over it? That would be a shame if they hurt it. There is so much to look at it makes you stare.

  16. That’s so cool seeing everything repurposed to art 🙂

  17. obzervashunal

    Yes, I would love to experience your work in person one day. Brilliant!

  18. Wow. Im speechless. Your art is very beautiful and artistic. Such an inspiration. I would love to follow your blog.

  19. I love the uniqueness of each collage! Kudos on the FP!

  20. Reblogged this on Mind,Body and Soul and commented:
    I miss being an artist. I need to paint more.

  21. This inspires me to pick up a paint brush!! Thank you!

  22. Very, very nice! Very interesting!

  23. Such movement, grit and street… yet so clean, controlled chaos. Pretty awesome work! I’d love to experience it to scale as well. 🙂

  24. The usual, effectively put into words. I like you have an effectively physical use of time.

  25. Art is happen. I mind is filling with idea. Sometime make hand move and color and make paper moving to beautiful. Is secret but feeling now become good. How? Giving thanks.

  26. Reblogged this on itravelforexperience and commented:
    Amazing 🙂

  27. Riyad

    Totally different art which I have seen first time …. Really awesome … 🙂

  28. Reblogged this on Stretch and Staple Blog and commented:
    Definitely a new and interesting take on photography collages.

  29. Victoria

    I love art of all types! This is outstanding!

  30. I see this as sculptural photography. Very interesting.

  31. What amazing work, keep it up.

  32. uparekh

    your work is really amzing.i love it, thanks for this post

    uparekh
    http://www.elala.in/

  33. Your work is unique and fascinating. I particularly like the link to Graffiti. Keep it up. Tony

  34. jumiss

    Creative Design

  35. darbisimmons

    These are incredible! I am so excited about this! Thanks for posting!

  36. Reblogged this on meshakart and commented:
    I find this artist interesting and I can relate to her subject matter.

  37. AGNIVA FIREWALL

    Reblogged this on The Higher Firewall and commented:
    Amazing and scintillating art. Spine striking beauty in the flawlessness!

  38. wonderful work. Wish I had your vision. Looking forward to see more.

  39. This was really interesting. Thank you for writing it!

  40. Reblogged this on All But Good Articles and commented:
    Interesting!

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